All of the above, and more. When cops are trained by the military and equipped by the military, they will tend to think of military solutions to problems that require policing, not soldiering.
Not if you know anything about the effect that small changes have on rare events.
Regards,
Shodan
These “small changes”, which probably include things like some cops being extra twitchy around black people, and extra-likely to draw weapons and pull the trigger, are precisely the problem.
Yes. Of course, they are all Caucasian.
… and some other good suggestions.
Here is mine: Require officers to give people they are detaining a little Miranda-type speech similar to when they get arrested. It seems that Daniele Watts, De Shawn Currie, and Jamal Jones might all have been confused about what was happening to them. As I understand it, in all 3 cases the police were making what amounts to a Terry stop, briefly detaining them on reasonable suspicion.
“Under the standard of reasonable suspicion you are being briefly detained so that we can investigate. You have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, but you must identify yourself. The US Supreme court has ruled in Maryland v. Wilson that you must briefly exit your vehicle…” That may not be the correct case to mention, but you get the idea. Tell people they are not being arrested, but detained. Tell them it will be brief. Quote some case authority for putting restraint on them. (While I’m looking for innovation here, why not develop some other type of restraint that is more comfortable and less ominous than handcuffs?) Tell the person what the pertinent state law or case law says about how they must identify themselves.
If the police say something that is obviously formulaic I think it would allay some suspicion in the person stopped that they are being treated arbitrarily.
One line that I have been dying to put into one of these cop threads is that “you should not have to have a semester of Criminal Law, a semester of Constitutional Law and a seminar on the 4th Amendment just to Drive While Black in America!”. Instead of requiring it of every citizen, make the cops tell you about Terry, Wilson, Hiibel, Arizona v. Johnson, or whatever.
The police aren’t required to give the Miranda warning (or anything else) at arrest. Miranda concerns interrogation, not arrest. The police don’t owe you an immediate explanation of their actions.
If they are violating your rights, they actually do.
Shodan, I guess you blew right past “Miranda-like” with emphasis on the “-like”. 
At any rate, unless and until there’s a court case making such a protocol the law of the land as it were (advisable protocol if you want to avoid issues later), the matter is left to the discretion/policy of a given law enforcement unit, and such protocol changes tend to be based purely on political or financial motivators (lawsuit losses or civil rights investigations).
True, a Miranda warning is not required merely because one has been arrested (another persistent myth/bit of misinformation thanks to television). But then also a persistent myth is the notion that police always issue one when they should. It’s not on the top of the to-do list except when video’ing the interaction before commencement of questioning.
Cops not being on average any more bright than any other person, it will take a good long while to sink in that prudence and operating by the book is best if for no other reason than that they must presume their actions are being recorded and by a means that they won’t be able to foil or make disappear.
Nope.
If they’re violating your rights, there are bigger issues at play that whether they tell you what they’re doing. The point is, the police may well have information that you don’t which justifies their actions. They are under no obligation to share that with you, they probably have better things to do. Like their actual job.
Which of course doesn’t include protecting my rights, my liberty or my freedom.
No, that’s exactly what their job involves. Which is why it is so mind-boggling how many people want to make it so difficult for them to do it.
Shodan, Stophan, Steophan … sorry I got that mixed up. (It’s a shame the board doesn’t have a feature to reply to particular folks, though; the “quote” feature doesn’t work so well for me.)
“No, that’s exactly what their job involves.”
It’s supposed to, yes, with a priority in public safety and whatever their specific role is (there are some cops who do nothing other than traffic-related stuff their entire careers). As a routine, depending where you are and who you are, however, protecting and serving the citizen isn’t at the tippy-top of their to-do list.
“Which is why it is so mind-boggling how many people want to make it so difficult for them to do it.”
You’re free to perceive it that way, of course, and I agree that some schmucks do just that (in your average traffic stop, for instance, trotting out the whine without the cheese “don’t you have anything better to do?!”, etc., etc.).
In no way minimizing anything mentioned here, at least we (in the US) don’t have deal with this sort of thing on a daily basis.
(More than 50 students killed outright or ‘disappeared’ by police in in the Mexican state of Guerrero, in a dispute that began with a demand for more fertilizer for poor farmers in the area.)
You got to think that 1) cameras would cut that number buy at least 80%, and 2) NYPD is full of cops that need to be jailed.
How does that follow? That someone is civilly liable doesn’t imply that they are criminally guilty.
While i believe that body cameras would, in fact, be very cost effective for precisely this reason, it is worth noting that we have to be a little careful using those raw figures in a conversation like this one.
The number of payouts ($428 million) over five years, does not reflect only cases where police have committed some sort of misconduct. The list contains every payout where the NYPD was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, even when police conduct was not an issue. For example, the largest payout on the list ($11.5 million) was for a case where a person was left paralyzed after a tree branch fell on him in Central Park.
Still a significant percentage of the cases (including some cases with seven-figure payouts) related to police behavior, including bad arrests, injuries inflicted, rights violations, etc. And there are recent payouts that did not even make the list because the cases began before the 2009 cutoff, like an $18-million payout going all the way back to the despicable way the cops handled the RNC protests in 2004.
If the use of body cameras reduces the number of payouts by even 10%, they will probably pay for themselves, without even taking into account the salutary effects of a better-behaved police force.
How about we amend it, then, to “NYPD is full of cops that need to be out of a job.”
Yes, that’s far more appropriate. Although if I were being extremely precise, I’d say it had a significant minority that needed to be out of a job. And whilst I wouldn’t necessarily say that every single cop that uses too much force needs to be instantly sacked, some of the ones mentioned in that article really need to be, the ones who have a pattern of excessive force.
Body cameras seem to be the best current solution, and whilst they won’t necessarily mean that everyone agrees what level of force is acceptable, it means that everyone will have a much better idea of what level of force is, in fact, being used.
a. I agree with the above. I mis-spoke about jail in a fit of pique. Mea culpa. But sacked they should be.
b. I also agree about cameras, for the reasons Steophan lists. Video at least gives everybody a semi-agreed upon starting point in any discussion about use of force. As I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere, the experiment in Rialto, CA seems to be rather conclusive that cameras drastically reduce complaints (decreased over 80%). It seems cameras keep both sides more honest in their dealing with each other.